Michael Ellis DeBakey

The American surgeon Michael Ellis DeBakey (born 1908) devised procedures for replacing diseased portions of the aorta, and was a leader in the devel opment of the artificial heart.

Michael DeBakey was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, on September 7, 1908. From early on he had a keen interest in biology, and he received his bachelor of science degree in 1930, his medical degree in 1932, and a master of science degree for research on peptic ulcers in 1935, from Tulane University. He then served as a medical resident in Europe at the universities of Strasbourg and Heidelberg. He married Diana Cooper on Oct. 15, 1936.

In 1937, DeBakey became a member of the Tulane faculty. Except for service during World War II in the Surgeon General's Office, where he rose to become chief of the surgery consultants division, he remained at Tulane until 1948. DeBakey had already become an expert in blood transfusion and had developed a roller-type pump for use in transfusions. It became an important component of the heart-lung machine.

In 1948 DeBakey was appointed professor of surgery at Baylor University College of Medicine in Houston, Tex. A year later he assumed responsibilities as surgeon in chief at Houston's Ben Taub General Hospital. In the 1950s DeBakey originated complex surgical procedures for the correction of aneurysms and blockages of the aorta involving replacing the diseased part with Dacron tubing.

The work for which DeBakey is best known involves the artificial heart. He initially concentrated on developing a left ventricular bypass (half an artificial heart) and in 1967 successfully implanted his device. He worked toward the development of a completely artificial heart and believed that such a heart was the ultimate answer to human heart replacement in spite of others' interest in heart transplantation.

In 1969 a former colleague, Dr. Denton Cooley, implanted a completely artificial heart in a human. Since Cooley had worked closely with DeBakey and because he was assisted by Dr. Domingo Liotta, who had worked with DeBakey on the artificial heart, DeBakey claimed priority of development. Cooley's artificial heart was not successful, and DeBakey held that much more work was needed to perfect the device.

DeBakey earned numerous awards and honors. In 1963, he received the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Research. The next year, he served on the President's Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke. This Commission recommended, among other things, the establishment of intensive-care centers for these diseases and community centers for diagnosis. He received the Medal of Freedom with Distinction in 1969, and the Presidential Medal of Science in 1987. In 1976 his students from around the world established the Michael E. DeBakey International Surgical Society, and Baylor University founded the Michael E. Debakey Center for Biomedical Education and the DeBakey Lectureship. DeBakey has authored well over one thousand published medical-scientific articles and more extensive works. His books include Battle Casualties, Incidence, Mortality, and Logistic Considerations (1952) with G. W. Beebe and Cold Injury, Ground Type (1958) with T. F Whayne.

In addition to his other positions DeBakey was chairman of the Department of Medicine at Methodist Hospital in Houston, physician in chief at the Fondren-Brown Cardiovascular Research Center, and director of the DeBakey Heart Center of Baylor and Methodist Hospital. In 1996, DeBakey again achieved international repute serving as consultant to the surgeons who performed heart bypass surgery on Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Further Reading

The greatest compilation of DeBakey's research can be found in his own The Living Heart, as well as in its sequels, The Living Heart's Shopper's Guide and The Living Heart's Guide to Eating Out. DeBakey's work is briefly discussed in Richard Hardaway Meade, An Introduction to the History of General Surgery (1968), and Robert G. Richardson, Surgery: Old and New Frontiers (1969), which is a revised and enlarged edition of The Surgeon's Tale (1958). □

DeBakey, Michael (1908–), cardiovascular surgeon.Heart surgery was not feasible when Michael DeBakey, a native of Lake Charles, Louisiana, earned his M.D. from Tulane University in 1932. After teaching surgery at Tulane (1937–1948), he became professor of surgery at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in 1948. As president of this institution (1969–1979), he led it from fiscal crisis to major stature. He became chancellor in 1979. DeBakey was concurrently senior attending surgeon at Houston's Methodist Hospital.

A pioneer in his field, DeBakey by 1996 had performed more than sixty thousand cardiovascular procedures. His innovations varied from Dacron artificial arteries (1953) to the development of a left ventricular bypass pump (1968). Other pace‐setting achievements included patch‐graft angioplasty and aorto‐coronary bypass using vein grafts from the leg. He developed more than seventy surgical instruments and other technology for cardiovascular surgery and treatment, published in excess of 1,500 professional articles, and trained more than 1,000 surgeons. A public advocate of federal support of biomedical research, education, and better health care, he chaired President Lyndon B. Johnson's Commission on Heart Diseases, Cancer, and Stroke; endorsed the federal Medicare system when practicing physicians overwhelmingly opposed it; and championed the establishment of the National Library of Medicine in 1956. To help laypersons understand the heart and heart disease, he coauthored two bestsellers, The Living Heart (1977) and The New Living Heart Diet (1984). When DeBakey in 1996 conferred in Moscow with Russian physicians who performed quintuple coronary bypass surgery on President Boris Yeltsin, media coverage portrayed him as America's most prominent cardiovascular surgeon.
See also Heart Disease; Medicare and Medicaid; Medicine: Since 1945.

Bibliography

William C. Roberts , Michael Ellis DeBakey: A Conversation with the Editor, American Journal of Cardiology 79, no. 7 (1 April 1997): 929–50.

Charles T. Morrissey

Michael Ellis DeBakey , 1908–2008, American surgeon, b. Lake Charles, La. While still at Tulane medical school (M.D., 1932), DeBakey developed the roller pump, which later became an essential component of the heart-lung machine, and he later made refinements in the technique of blood transfusions. During World War II he helped develop what became the mobile army surgical hospital (MASH), allowing treatment of war casualties near the front lines. In 1948, DeBakey became head of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and his work there made that institution an important center for medical research and education. Five years later, he made medical history by performing the first successful carotid endarterectomy. A pioneer in Dacron grafts for blood vessels, DeBakey revolutionized the surgery of aneurysms . In 1966 he successfully implanted a ventricular assist device (see heart, artificial ) in a patient; it was removed after the patient's heart strengthened. He also led (1968) the team of surgeons that performed the first multiple organ harvest and transplant, in which four patients received organs from a single donor. DeBakey, who received a Lasker Award in 1963, was president of Baylor College of Medicine from 1969 to 1979 and chancellor from 1979 to 1996; he retired as head of surgery in 1993.